The original conference coverage:

Time and place

The ATypI 08 St Petersburg conference will be held in St Petersburg, Russia from 17 to 21 September 2008 (Wednesday to Sunday). The TypeTech/TypeTools Forum and the pre-conference workshops will be held on Wednesday 17 and Thursday 18 September. The main conference will open with an keynote presentation on the evening of Thursday 18 September, with sessions running through Friday 19, Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 September. A detailed overview of the program is now available.

St Petersburg was founded by Czar Peter the Great as his ‘window on the West,’ and boasts a famous array of classic architecture, museums, canals, bridges, and vibrant contemporary life. In the Soviet era, when it was known as Leningrad, the city withstood one of the most brutal sieges of modern times, during World War II, and was immortalized in the poems of Anna Akhmatova and the music of Dmitri Shostakovich. It is a destination city for European visitors and a modern Russian cultural center.

The conference base will be the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, one of St Petersburg’s many palaces, on the famous Nevsky Prospekt. The workshops will be held at an additional location.

Program

Those using Apple iCal on Mac OS X or iPhone can subscribe to the conference calendar. You will automatically see updates in your iCal as changes become available!
To subscribe, click on the subscribe in iCal link. When iCal opens, click on Subscribe,
and in the Subscribing to atypi08.ics dialog, activate Refresh and set it to every week.

Those using Microsoft Outlook can download and import the calendar.
Right-click on the download the iCalendar link, choose Save target as
and save it to some location. Then, start Outlook, choose File / Import and Export, click Import an iCalendar or vCalendar file,
click Next, in the Files of type list, choose iCalendar Format, navigate to the location where you saved the calendar, and click OK.
Note that after you import the calendar, it will not automatically update so you may need to import it again in a few weeks to see any changes.

Registration

Conference registration is now open so you can register right away. However, before you register, please check the visa requirements!

Anniversary

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the beginning of Peter the Great’s historic reform of Russian typography (1708–1710). The czar’s top-down reform wrenched the Russian printed word from a form rooted in its medieval origins into a new, Western-looking form that became known as the Civil Type. All the languages that today use the Cyrillic script have been affected by this reform, and the development of Russian printing and typography over the last three centuries is based on it.

Theme

The theme of the 2008 conference is The Old · The New. This topic is perennially relevant to the creative work of the communication designer, and especially important in our times of rapid advancement of communication technologies. The speed of change often takes the public by surprise; it outpaces the evolution of the human mind, of the means of expression, of the conventions of communication; its promise frequently exceeds the actual demand of the user. Among design professionals, this pressure of technology causes – not infrequently – considerable confusion, loss of direction, perspective, and priorities.

Addressing the many issues and challenges of The New, as well as its complex relationship with The Old –
at different levels: psychological, intellectual, methodological, practical, &c. – may provide for a better understanding of the direction in which we as a community are moving, and for the creation of a professional agenda adequate to the challenges of the day.